Final Heist – Movie Review (2/5)

FINAL HEIST on TUBI is a new thriller. It’s a TUBI Original that manages to entertain but has an incredibly weak story. I do, however, appreciate that the main cast differs from what we usually see. Read our full Final Heist movie review here!

FINAL HEIST is a new TUBI Original thriller with a short runtime of just 1 hour and 23 minutes – excluding commercial breaks. The short runtime is in its favor as I don’t dare imagine what extra details would’ve been attached to this plot, had the runtime been longer.

It’s a MarVista production, which usually means something entertaining, but nothing where you should expect much logic. This movie fits that bill perfectly! It entertains – sometimes in unintentional ways – but solely thanks to the overall experience and its cast.

Continue reading our Final Heist movie review below. Find it on TUBI from February 9, 2024.

A different kind of heist movie

While Final Heist begins with a classic bank robbery – or really, the robbery happens via the armored vehicle transporting cash from the bank – the title refers to a very different kind of heist.

The main character, Willa (Camila Banus), has a healthy and happy daughter who suddenly collapses. Turns out she has a heart condition and needs tissue from a matching donor. They test Willa’s blood for a match but there isn’t one. It then turns out that her father – whom Willa had claimed was deceased – is still very much alive, but also very much in prison.

So, the logical conclusion in a movie like Final Heist is that they need to break into a maximum security prison to obtain tissue from the girl’s father. In other words, Willa and her former robbery gang must break into the prison and then escape with the tissue.

Yeah, it doesn’t make sense. Including the fact that his blood is never tested for an actual match.

Leave logic behind when you press play

The whole breaking into a prison is something you may have seen recently if you watched the amazing Netflix series Boy Swallows Universe. And if you haven’t then you really ought to. That Australian series has everything going for it!

Anyway, the whole “breaking into prison”-ordeal isn’t very different in Final Heist yet it’s a whole lot more clumsy. Especially as they need to perform surgery on an inmate and bring tissue to a real hospital. As if you can just bring your own donor tissue and organs into a hospital.

Well, when your neighbor is a doctor the hospital, it’s no problem. Also, this is a TUBI Original, so you cannot take anything too seriously. Also, never mind the fact that this maximum security prison has a very lax approach to “security”. Doors are open everywhere and a new librarian (part of Willa’s posse) walks around wherever she feels like.

It’s just really bad when trying to make us believe it’s a big ol’ heist that’s all kinds of difficult to pull off.

Watch Final Heist on TUBI now

Ted Campbell is the director of Final Heist which he also co-wrote with Richard Pierce. I will give this thriller props for having mostly women in charge of the heist. This is a redeeming quality that sets it apart from many other heist movies and ensures a different tone. There’s more heart and humor, less guns and violence.

Unfortunately, it’s also very heavy-handed when it comes to portraying the criminals as good people and anyone involved with law enforcement and prison guarding as either stupid, gullible or downright sadistic. Also, the screenplay offers no surprise. Even when you hope that what you expect is wrong, you better believe it’s going to happen. Unfortunately!

Look, this is not a good movie in terms of story. However, there’s enough progress and some good performances (as well as a few subpar) in Final Heist to check it out.

Final Heist is on TUBI from February 9, 2024.

Details

Director: Ted Campbell
Screenplay: Ted Campbell & Richard Pierce
Cast: Camila Banus, Jasmine Shanise, Shonte Akognon, Virginia Ma, Justin Chu Cary, Andy Umberger, Michael Jordan Craven